Kausas Academij of Science. 77 



MAN AND MICROBES.* 



John Sundwali.. 

 I. PRIMITIVE MEDICAL PRACTICE. 



SINCE the very beginning of man — and that w^as a long time 

 ago — until comparatively recent times, demons and disease 

 have been inextricably linked together in the human mind. 



Archaeological, historical and ethnological literatures abound 

 with narratives respecting the relation of spirits to illness. 

 Babylonians, Assyrians and Hindus alike held that the air was 

 peopled by spirits, chiefly of the evil, aggressive kind, that 

 scattered havoc and destruction among mankind. Even at 

 this late day of boasted civilization we may state with assur- 

 ance that seven-eighths of the world's population are firm 

 believers in the demonological etiology of disease, and proceed 

 to treat it as they did in the very earliest period of man's 

 existence, with incantations, amulets, charms and talismans. 



I shall attempt only to outline this evening the development 

 and progress of those activities directed towards an under- 

 standing and control of the invisible destructive forces respon- 

 sible for disease and death. 



The oldest medical treatises known are the Petrie Papyrus, 

 discovered near El Sahun and dated 1600 years B. C. ; the 

 Papyrus Ebers, dated about 1500 B. c. ; the Berlin Medical 

 Papyrus, dated about 1400 B. C, and the British Museum 

 Papyrus, which was written some 1100 years B. C. In these 

 papyri are formulae for cures which were administered in the 

 form of incantations and by the priest physicians. A prescrip- 

 tion for diseases of the eye reads as follows : "Let one take a 

 human brain and divide it in half. Let one half of it be added 

 to honey, and the eye be annointed with this in the evening. 

 The other half should be dried and finely ground, and it may 

 be then used for anointing the eye in the morning." 



All primitive worship of invisible forces has been directed 

 towards some symbol, such as idols, etc. Naturally there were, 

 to these races, good spirits who successfully combated the evil 

 ghosts of disease. Worship of this god of cure was manifested 

 among the Eg>^ptians in their I-Em-Hotep, or god of medicine 

 — a little bald-headed man. It seems that baldness and learn- 



* Illustrated lecture given under the auspices of the Kansas Academy of Science, 

 Topeka, Januarj' 12, 1917. 



